Medjugorje and the Authentic Work of God

As I was making my way to the Catholic Church, I was deeply blessed by an encounter with a 17th century priest who taught me, through his writings, how to overcome aridity in prayer. This was a significant breakthrough for me and brought me tremendous relief. I developed an instant affinity to this priest and looked for other writings of his that might help me. By God’s grace, I didn’t find anything else about him until I became Catholic and discovered that his teachings were condemned by the Church.

The central lesson of this encounter was that God works through people and situations both because of them and in spite of them. In this case, once I received official word about the Church’s ruling on his writings, I set them aside. It is very important to note that I didn’t set aside the truth and the blessings that I received in this case. What I recognized, though, was that the gifts I received were from God, not from this errant priest.

All this isn’t a setup to say that I believe that Medjugorje is a fraud. In fact, I don’t. That said, I don’t believe the converse either.